Suzanne Craig-Whytock's Blog, page 2

Getting Freaked-y With It

Before I begin, I’d just like to say a huge thank you to Sally Georgina Cronin of Smorgasbord Blog Magazine for featuring my latest novel Charybdis and one of the excellent reviews it’s received. I really appreciate it and you can read it here! And now on to the lunacy.

I’ve been spending a lot of time on Facebook Marketplace lately, looking for cool miniatures to use for my tiny rooms. Here’s the latest room that I made:

It’s in our guest bedroom and it IS our guest bedroom (or at least a close approximation), which makes me feel so meta. Or mini-meta as the case may be. I can’t seem to control the Marketplace algorithm though—I want it to show me all the miniature things, but once—JUST ONCE—I clicked on an ad for a mobile home and my ‘suggested for you’ feed is literally all mobile homes, campers, and tiny homes. Is the universe telling me to downsize?

At any rate, I’ve seen a few really strange ads in the past couple of weeks. This person who posted this one REALLY wanted to make sure that people understood exactly what it was:

And of course, my first instinct was to immediately message with “Is this a bag for a man? I would like to purchase it for my husband, as he is a man.” Why would anyone be THAT worried about the gender of the person potentially buying their bag? Anytime I post anything, my main concern is that people don’t ask stupid questions like, “Where are you located?” when I clearly state in the ad EXACTLY where I’m located.

While the above ad is weird in its own way, this next ad freaked me out. One would think that when one was trying to rent a private room, that the picture would be OF the room, not of some dude giving off a definite serial killer vibe. Of course, the ad says there are 18 more pictures but I was too scared to look. Also, I put the bar over his eyes to protect his identity, but they were HAUNTED.

And I don’t know where this room is, but I wouldn’t want to wake up in the middle of the night to discover it’s not actually PRIVATE after all.

Finally, if you think the last ad was freaky, what the hell is this one?

Is it The Blair Witch Barbie? If you’re trying to sell a doll, why would you pose it FACING the wall? I mean, I know Hallowe’en is coming, but then shouldn’t the picture be more like this:

And speaking of bizarre things that will freak you out, yesterday I went over to the local fall fair. It’s a typical fall fair with competitions in different categories like best quilt, antique stumper, largest pumpkin, and whatnot. And there’s also a school competition where the students at the local public school are given categories of their own to enter. I was having a lovely time checking out the paintings, best popsicle stick structure and so on, and then I came across this:

Maybe the guy who thought that category up is the same one with the room for rent…

The Keys To Happiness

(Here’s a little throwback from a several years ago):

A few days ago, I was in the kitchen and I happened to look up at the really cute key holder on the wall that I’d made out of an old breadboard and antique keys to hold not-antique keys. My brow furrowed. “Ken!” I called. “Did you put all those keys on that lanyard and hang it on the key holder?”

Ken (yells back): Yes
Me: Well, what are they all for?
Ken: I don’t know.
Me: If you don’t know what they’re for, why did you put them all on the lanyard? Where did they all come from?
Ken: They were all just hanging on different hooks on the key board so I put them together.
Me: But you don’t know what they’re for.
Ken: Correct.
Me: So if you don’t know what they’re for, and we don’t use them, why didn’t you just throw them away?! What are you, some kind of key hoarder?
Ken: I am NOT a hoarder. They’re just nice keys and you never know when you might need one.

This is me holding the lanyard up to Ken and demanding to know what they’re for. In the picture, I have transformed into an angry elderly man and the lanyard is a two-dollar macrame plant holder, which is just about as useful as a multitude of mysterious keys.

There were 18 keys. We have 4 doors that require keys, so you’d think at least one of them would have fit at least one of the doors. You would, however, be incorrect. I took the systematic approach, and by that I mean at first, I carried all the keys around and tried them in the doors, but there were so many keys and doors that I lost track and couldn’t remember which ones I’d experimented with. So I took them all off the lanyard and lay them out on the counter in a straight line. Then Kate came in and identified three that were for the lab at her former university from several years ago (the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, apparently), which left 15 keys. I tried each key in each door and you know what happened? Again, none of them fit any door in our house.

Me: This is f*cking bullsh*t.
Ken: You sound like that guy at the brewery the other day.

And here’s a fun tangent. The other day, Ken and I went on a roadtrip to our antiques booth, and on the way back, we decided to stop for lunch at a local brewery that had outside seating. There was a foursome at the next picnic table, and we couldn’t help but overhear their conversation, which was an absolute cornucopia of epithets (and for the purpose of this conversation, I will be transcribing the swearing verbatim so there will be no asterisks):

Sweary Dude: If you fucking go to Scotland, they don’t fucking say ‘yes’ there. They say fucking ‘aye’.
Woman: Really?
SD: Fucking right. So you better be fucking prepared because they say ‘aye’ a fucking lot. And I was fucking talking to Pete the other day, that fucking German guy…

So Ken and I discussed the use of the word f*ck and what parts of speech it could be substituted for: noun, adjective, verb, adverb, preposition…

Ken: Can you use it as a pronoun?
Me: Only if you say f*cker. Like ‘F*cker ordered another beer.’ It can also be used as an interjection. Do you remember Schoolhouse Rocks?

And that led us down a rabbit hole of 1970s animated linguistic cartoons, culminating in Ken’s favourite, Mr. Morton, which is about predicates: “Mr. Morton talked to his cat (‘Hey Cat, you look good’), Mr. Morton talked.” Because Mr. Morton is the subject of the sentence, and what the predicate says, he does. At the end of the song, Mr. Morton gets the girl, Pearl, and they get predicately married. It’s very sweet, and there is not a single use of the word f*ck in the entire cartoon, as one would hope.

At any rate, I myself was quite sweary after putting 15 keys into 4 separate locks and discovering that none of them opened any door in my house.

Ken: Maybe they were for other locks, like ones we’ve replaced.
Me: We’ve lived here for 21 years. We’ve replaced the locks on ALL the doors. Why do we have 21-year old keys??!!
Ken: We could make a craft with them.
Me: Or we could throw them away. The last craft we made with keys is still sitting in our antiques booth because no one wants NEW KEYS.

So I threw them all away. But you just know that next week, we’re going to find a padlock or something that we hadn’t even thought of, and now we won’t have a key for it, or one of you will be like “Here’s a cool thing you can do with new keys” but now they’re gone. F*ck! That’s an interjection.

Make Alignments Great Again

Before I start, I’d like to just express my eternal and deeply felt gratitude to the wonderful Susan Richardson of Flowering Ink’s Stories from the Edge of Blindness, and most importantly for today’s purpose, the podcast A Thousand Shades of Green. Many weeks ago, Susan undertook to feature my short story collection Dark Nocturnes on her podcast for Story Sessions. She has faithfully, tirelessly, and brilliantly read every story in the collection, all 32 of them, over the last few weeks, and I can’t tell you how much that means to me. She finished yesterday with the final story, Mr. Death Goes To Market, and like the rest of her readings, it was phenomenal. If you’d like to hear Susan basically turn my collection into a fantastic audiobook, you can hear her read each story by going here: https://athousandshadesofgreen.com/story-sessions/ And if you like what you hear, leave a comment or a review, or even buy Dark Nocturnes for yourself–here’s the link!:

http://a-fwd.com/asin=B0DY8B6C1K

And now on with the inanity. A couple of weeks ago, my car was making some awful noises so I took it to my mechanic. Turns out all the tie rods were worn out, which explained why my cute little Sonic was creaking and groaning like my joints in the morning, only I’m almost 60 and my car’s only 12. I got what amounted to basically a new front end “but,” my mechanic said, “you’ll need a wheel alignment and we don’t have the rack to do it here.”

So I asked around and got a recommendation for a place up the road. The afternoon before my appointment, I decided to go there and see A) where exactly it was and B) to see if I could drop off the car later that day instead of first thing the next morning, because I’m retired and I don’t go anywhere early if I can help it.

When I saw the sign for the business, I had an uncomfortable revelation—the long laneway led to a “community farm”, which was occupied by people, part of a religious cult, who live communally in large barrack-type buildings on several acres. And the mechanics were apparently part of the cult. I’d never been there, but let me tell you, it was incredibly eerie, and not because of all the zealots. No, the place was completely deserted—no adults, no children, even in the summertime–literally no one. I found out later that over time, most of them had left. Or died, based on the creepy cemetery they had on the property.

I couldn’t see anyone, and the garage looked deserted too, so I drove around the back—just in time to see an elderly man taking a piss against some bushes. Like, do religious cults not have BATHROOMS? He looked at me as if he couldn’t imagine why I was there. I explained, staying IN the car, and was told yes, I could drop the car off later. I wasn’t thrilled but Ken came with me after dinner to make sure there were no more urinary shenanigans.

Then, the next day we went to pick the car up. We walked into the office and there was a guy sitting there on the phone. Sitting on a shelf above him like some kind of weirdass trophy was a bright red “Make America Great Again” ball cap. And while this might be de rigeur in America, I live IN CANADA. So it was very f*cking off-putting, and why wasn’t I surprised that a business run by members of a religious cult would be displaying something like that? And then he had the nerve to tell me that they couldn’t get my wheels completely aligned because there might be something wrong with one of my tires. And I so badly wanted to say, “Then keep it and FIX it” but at that point, all I wanted to do was hightail it out of his Stephen King-esque MAGA Christ Cult Compound. Needless to say I won’t be going back there anytime soon. And I really hope they get their plumbing fixed.

Breaking The Mold

Every time I look at my list of posts on WordPress, I see one in my drafts folder called Blow Molds. I remember writing it—Ken remembers reading it after I initially wrote it, and it never even occurred to me that I had never posted it. It was supposed to go live on Sunday, November 19 2023. I realized this week after investigating that IT NEVER GOT POSTED AND NONE OF YOU EVER SAID “WHERE IS THIS WEEK’S POST, MYDANGBLOG?!” At any rate, it was really funny, so I’m posting it this week so I hope you enjoy it, even almost 2 years later when I no longer work in an antique market:

It’s gotten quite a lot busier at work lately. First, because the summer construction project that was supposed to finish in September is finally done, and people have actually stopped using the antique market parking lot as a bypass/speedway and are now parking and shopping, and second, because Christmas is coming and everyone buys their Christmas antiques in November. The current trend, carried over from last year is BLOW MOLDS. If you don’t know what a blow mold is, it’s a large plastic figure in the shape of a Santa or a Snowman, made out of plastic which has been blown into a mold—hence the name. They plug in and light up at night, turning your house into a veritable winter wonderland, even if you still don’t have any snow. These things are getting as expensive to buy as ceramic Christmas trees (you know, the ones everybody’s grandma had in the 70s). And the more savvy collectors are looking for the extra, the unique, the really hard-to-find ones. Currently, about the cashier’s counter, we have a giant blow mold Santa in a blow mold sleigh, with a team of blow mold reindeer pulling him. Along the side, it says “Noel”, which already caused a stir because one of the young bosses had apparently never taken French in school and thought that Noel was Santa’s first name, like “Noel Santa Claus” and we all had a good laugh until someone corrected him.

And it’s no surprise that on Wednesday, my boss came to the till with an older couple. He pointed up to the shelf above the cash counter and told his brother to get a step stool so they could get a purchase down. I was standing ready as the couple came to my till. My boss called over the vendor number and the price, which I thought was extremely high, but then again, it WAS a lot of blow mold, and in the item description I typed “Santa Reindeer Blow Mold” as one would. The woman who was buying was quite excited:

Me: That’s a really awesome one. Good for you—great find.
Woman: I know. It’s so cool.
Me: I’ve never seen one like that before—really unique.
Woman: It’s perfect. Our foyer is a pirate ship.

And if you’re like me at all, you probably just did a double take. “Our foyer is a pirate ship”?? And several things went through my mind simultaneously, like 1) What the f*ck does she mean? Does she actually LIVE on a pirate ship, the bow of which she considers her foyer or 2) Is the foyer in her home DECORATED like a pirate ship? And 3) Why the f*ck would anyone a) live in a pirate ship or b) decorate their home like one and 4) The biggest question of all is HOW THE HELL IS THIS GIANT SANTA/SLEIGH/REINDEER COMBINATION A PART OF THE PIRATE MOTIF??!!

I had a vision of the whole thing hanging from the ceiling above the foredeck with pirates down below all gesturing and threatening it with their pirate swords and whatnot, when I suddenly realized that the guys had simply moved the whole blow mold out of the way to retrieve a huge, framed shadow box that was full of replica pistols. And then the whole thing suddenly made sense in that weird “it doesn’t really make sense that anyone would be that jazzed about pirate decorating” but at least the fake guns were more aligned with the aesthetic. Afterwards, my boss had to correct the item description in the computer system so the vendor wouldn’t be confused over someone paying $600 for a blow mold instead of his gun box. But it was surreal.

Two year s later and I’m still f*cking hilarious. You’ll miss me when I’m gone.

I Am A Delight

As you may or may not know, I’ve been hosting a radio show once a month since March-ish. And while I love the idea of being a radio host, you also may remember that I find it extremely stressful. The studio is about 45 minutes away, in an old, run-down factory that is most definitely haunted, and I have to go there on a Sunday when no one else is around. This necessitates Ken accompanying me, when he could be building me a new garden house (his current project) or napping because he’s exhausted from being awake. And it’s a good job he comes with me, because the station is unstaffed, and every time I go, something has been unplugged or a button that’s supposed to be pushed isn’t, and I never know until the very second I start the show, when Ken will pop up behind the glass between the studio and the ‘green room’ (it’s green—that’s the only thing about it that resembles a Green Room) and frantically mouths “It’s just dead air!” Then it’s a mad dash to figure out what’s gone wrong THIS time.

But this month, due to a variety of reasons, none of my guests were able to make it to the studio for today’s episode of Reader’s Delight. Normally, when someone can’t come in, they just pre-record themselves doing a reading, but then I had a brainwave. Why couldn’t I interview these writers remotely via Zoom, and upload the audio to the station’s scheduled playlist? Never mind that I had ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA how to do any of that, but it was okay because the one thing I DO have, the most important thing, is a daughter who is a WHIZ at sh*t like this:

Me: Hey honey, do you know how to splice together three audio tracks into one and then convert the whole thing into an MP3 file?
Katelyn: Sure.
Me: I WILL GIVE YOU TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS IF YOU DO THIS FOR ME.
Katelyn (laughs): Okay, Mother.

And that’s just what we did. I interviewed 2 people remotely (I already had one pre-recorded track because the author was in Europe) and then sent the files to Kate.

Me: Are you sure you know how to do this?
Kate: What? It’s already done. Check your email.

And I was SO thrilled…until I listened to the whole thing through. It was terrific, the authors were engaging, the audio was edited so smoothly…the only problem was ME. Specifically right at the end. I don’t have professional Zoom, so I only had 40 minute sessions, and the last author and I had had a wonderful chat at the beginning, using up a lot of Zoom time, unbeknown to me. It wasn’t until she was in the middle of her reading that I got a pop-up that said, “You have 10 minutes remaining” so I started to panic. She finished with about 4 minutes to spare, but I was so flustered that, at the end of my outro, I said—and I’m not joking—“Until next time…uh, listen to me then.” And if that’s not the WORST tagline that a radio show host could have, I don’t know what is. So now I’m brainstorming for really punchy taglines. Maybe “Until next time, keep reading!”? “Until next time, keep adding to your TBR pile!”? I don’t know—if you have any ideas, PLEASE tell me! Because hopefully, I’ll be doing this remotely from now on, depending on what happens this afternoon at 2 pm when the show airs. Until next time…listen to me then (by streaming it on CKMS Radio Waterloo 102.7 FM).

I Just Want What I’m Owed; Book Advice

Whenever I go anywhere, I like to take back country roads. But the more I do, the more there’s something I’ve noticed, something I’ve become painfully, jealously aware of:

Me: I want to move to the country.
Ken: Why?
Me: Because I want a camper and a boat.
Ken: What?
Me: Because when you move to the country, you automatically get a camper and a boat. Obviously. Apparently, it’s a rule.
Ken: Whose rule?
Me: The government, I assume. Like, it must be a government program or whatnot. When you move to the country, the government gives you a camper and a boat. It’s probably some kind of incentive—you know, to reduce congestion in the cities.
Ken: You know that’s not true, right?
Me: Not true? Look around, KEN. Every single place you drive by in the country has at least one of each. Bob has TWO campers—AND a horse! See, this is why I love socialism. Universal healthcare, social security, free campers and boats. It’s awesome.
Ken: They’re NOT free! And you HATE camping.
Me: I hate camping in a TENT. I’d totally go camping in our cool free government camper.
Ken: And what about the boat? We aren’t anywhere near a lake.
Me: No one EVER IS, KEN. But we have a trailer hitch. We can tow it places. Or, it just sits next to our barn. That’s what most people do with them, as far as I can tell. It’s ‘Farm Chic’.
Ken: We’re not moving to the country.
Me: You’re so mean! I want my boat and camper. It’s only fair—I pay my taxes! I want MY DUE! (starts scrolling through Realtor.ca for a cute country property)
Ken: Sigh. Let me know if you find anything.

Unfortunately, I don’t have any pictures of a country property with a camper and a boat because the government doesn’t want people to know about it—it’s a state secret.

In other news, as an author and owner of DarkWinter Press and Literary Magazine, I often get asked what comes after the initial thrill of a book’s release. Here’s a fun little article I was asked to write by Women Writers, Women[s] Books about things you can do once your first book gets published to keep the momentum going! https://booksbywomen.org/so-your-first-novel-just-got-published-now-what/

No One Expects…

And if you finished the title of this post with …The Spanish Inquisition! then you know I wrote this for you. It’s been a slow week, so here’s a Monty Python flashback…

A couple of years ago, I wrote about watching a woman walk up to the front of a train, hitting everyone in the head on her way by, and I remarked that it was like something out of a Monty Python sketch. For those of you who don’t know, Monty Python was not a person; it was an absurdist comedy troupe that formed in the late 60s. Over the course of the next couple of decades, they had a TV series, live concerts, and several movies including Monty Python and The Holy Grail and The Life of Brian. If you’ve never heard of them or seen any of their work, then I don’t even know what to tell you. But if you ARE familiar with Monty Python, you’ll understand when I say that it has occurred to me on more than one occasion that my life is pretty much one long Monty Python sketch. They’re well-known for numerous hysterically surreal scenarios, and below you will find the parallel circumstances of some of these moments in my own life. There are five below—4 are slightly exaggerated for comedic purposes and one of them is absolutely as it happened. See if you can guess which one.

Pet Shop

Late afternoon. The 11th floor.

Me: I’m having an issue with my computer.
IT Guy: Ah, yes. The Lenovo. What’s the problem?
Me: I’ll tell you what the problem is, my lad. It’s broken.
IT Guy: Broken? Have you tried turning it off and on again?
Me: Yes. It’s definitely broken.
IT Guy: It’s probably just doing updates. Remarkable machine, the Lenovo. Lovely keyboard.
Me: The keyboard doesn’t enter into it, mate! It’s broken! (*bangs laptop against desk*)
IT Guy: There, see? It’s fine—the screen flickered.
Me: No, it didn’t! (*opens and closes lid rapidly*) Cortana! Oh, Cortana!! See, it’s not working. And don’t tell me it’s pining for the fjords.
IT Guy: Fjords? In Canada? Give it here. Right—it was just a password problem. I’ve unlocked it for you.
Me: I wish I was a lumberjack.
IT Guy: You’re ok.

Argument Clinic

Early morning. Alarm goes off.

Me: Ergh. I’m so tired. I wish I could just call in and take the day off like some people can.
Ken: Dan’s not coming into work?
Me: Who’s Dan?
Ken: Isn’t he the person who’s not coming into work?
Me: No, I said ‘Like people can’.
Ken: Was he off yesterday too?
Me: Who?!
Ken: That Dan guy.
Me: What the f*ck are you talking about?!
Ken: What are you trying to tell me?
Me: I’m tired and I don’t want to go to work! Why don’t you either follow along or go back to sleep?!
Ken: Be like Dan.
Me: This argument has gone on way too long.
Ken: Are you staying home today?
Me: This is futile.

Michelangelo and the Pope

Via email

Literary Magazine: Greetings. We really enjoyed your short story and would like to publish it. We just need you to make a few minor revisions.
Me: I can do that. What were you thinking?
Lit Mag: Get rid of the family next door. They’re not important to the plot and they push the word count up.
Me: Get rid of them? But they add a bit of colour to the setting. Plus, the father’s presence allows the reader to infer a lot about the way the town perceives the main character. He’s like an Everyman.
Lit Mag: All right. We can live with the family, but we need you to lose the last paragraph. Just end it with the boy and the woman eating watermelon.
Me: Lose the last paragraph?! That’s where you find out the husband is dead all along!
Lit Mag: The husband’s DEAD?! Thanks for the spoiler. Regardless, it’s not necessary.
Me: NOT NECESS—look mate, you don’t want a writer, you want a bloody stenographer!
Lit Mag: We’re a bloody small university press, we are! We may not know writing but we know what we like!

Four Yorkshiremen

Lunchtime. Jack’s Office.

Jack: Who’d have thought we’d be sitting here using “Teams” on our Iphones. I miss the old days. Do you know, they’re not even making laptops with CD drives in them anymore? I remember my first computer—it was a Commodore 64.
Me: Commodore 64? You were lucky. I typed my honours thesis on a Vic 20.
Jack: I remember doing a lot of my high school essays on an electric typewriter.
Me: Electric? Ooh, we used to DREAM of electric typewriters. I learned to type on an old manual that weighed more than you did.
Jack: At least with computers, you could save everything on diskette instead of having to use carbon paper. Remember those floppy discs?
Me: Floppy discs? You were lucky. Back in my day, we had to save all our data on CASSETTE TAPES. And when the data was saved, we had to go outside and lick the road clean with our tongues.
Jack: What?
Me: Nothing. Remember when we all had Blackberries?
Jack: Blackberry? You were lucky. I had a flip phone for years.
Me: Flip phones?! You were lucky to have one of THEM. Back in my day, we had car phones the size of a laptop bag that plugged into the car. And they were RADIOACTIVE. We DREAMED of flip phones.
Jack: But you try to tell the young people of today that–
Me: And they won’t believe you.

The Spanish Inquisition

9 pm. The front door opens.

Me: Oh! It’s you!
Ken: Who were you expecting—the Spanish Inquisition?
Atlas (*flies into room*): NO ONE expects the Spanish Inquisition!
Me: Nice cloak.

Our chief weapon is the element of surprise…

I’ve linked each title to the corresponding Python sketch, and here’s the link to all the Monty Python scripts from A-M here and from N-Z here in case you want to see how life imitates art.

Robots Everywhere

Last week, my parents moved, and as part of the process, they did a lot of downsizing, which meant Ken and I scored big time. A new Keurig, a salad spinner, a TV for our newly renovated attic, a LOT of salt, a container of the best silver cleaner I’ve ever used, and a ton of other things too numerous to mention, including this:

I’d seen the picture on the box and grabbed it on the grounds that “it’s better to have it and not need it, than to need it and not have it.” It wasn’t until later that I realized what they were called. “Sliding ROBOTS”? And I think someone at the table when they were workshopping the name got a little carried away:

Marketing Person 1: We need a catchy name for our cheap plastic product that makes it sound super-fancy and impressive to justify the price.

Marketing Person 2: What about E-Z Gliders? People love it when you turn words into letters, and “glider” sounds real smooth.

Marketing Person 1: Seriously Frank? Remind me why I hired you again?

Marketing Person 3: He’s your brother.

Marketing Person 1: Well, you know what they say about nepotism—keep it in the family, amiright?

Marketing Person 3: You know what people REALLY love? ROBOTS! Why don’t we call them “Gliding Robots”?

Marketing Person 1: That’s WAY too complicated. “Sliding Robots” is much more memorable.

Marketing Person 2: But they don’t have any moving parts—how can they be—

Marketing Persons 1 and 3: Shut up, FRANK.

And in honour of the Sliding Robot, I’ve decided to rename things in and around my house, thus turning them into robots. See if you can guess what these robots really do (answers at the end):

Wind Robot
Square Water Hardener Robot
Cat Feces Robot
Slicey Hot Box Robot
Dirt Navigation Robot
Mucous Robot
Focus Robot
Tubular Communication Robot
Beverage Delivery Robot
Small Portable Petroleum Combustion Robot

In other news, a few days ago, I was outside watering some plants, and when I bent over to turn off the hose tap, a swarm of wasps flew up from beneath the garden mulch and attacked me. One flew right in my eye, and I swatted it enough that it didn’t sting me IN my eye but on my lower eye lid, as the rest of them started coming in for the kill. I screamed and ran as fast as I could, right by Ken who asked, “Hey, what’s going on?” as I kept screaming. I beat the wasps into the house and proceeded to hold my eye under the cold tap but it didn’t help and OMG did it ever hurt! I iced it all night, but it swelled up like crazy to the point where I woke up the next morning and the view from my left eye was BLOCKED BY MY FACE. It’s better now, but I will never forget the sensation of a wasp crawling on my eyeball. Ick.

Here are the answers to the Robot Quiz:

Fan
Ice Cube Tray
Poop Scooper
Toaster
Wheelbarrow (or Broom)
Kleenex/Facial Tissue
Reading Glasses (or Magnifying Glass)
Pen
Glass, Mug, Keurig, or whatnot
Barbeque

Let me know how many robots you got right.

Getting An Earful

A couple of weeks ago, Atlas started shaking his head violently and scratching at his ears. We’d been down this road before so we took him to the vet right away–it was an ear infection. Two hundred dollars, eardrops, and a dose of antibiotics later, he was right as rain in a couple of days. And it reminded me of the first time it happened…

When Atlas was about two years old, Ken was looking inside his ears, as one does, and he noticed that they looked dirty. He cleaned them but it didn’t seem to help. On Friday, when Kate came home from school where she was studying to be a veterinary technician, we asked her to examine him.

“MY ears!” he proclaimed, wriggling around.

“Hold still,” she said. “Hmm. It looks like either ear mites or an infection. Better take him to the vet.”

So we did. Atlas, of course, goes mental with excitement if you ask him if he wants to go for a car ride, but the bloom was soon off THAT rose when he realized that it wasn’t a fun trip.

“MY EARS! MINE!” he insisted, shaking and peeing all over the examining table when the vet took a look, but he calmed down when he realized she wasn’t going to do to his ears what she did to his testicles. Yes, it was some kind of yeast infection. And after two weeks of ear drops, and two subsequent visits to our vet (free-of-charge follow-ups), it still hadn’t cleared up. The verdict was in. “No table scraps or treats for at least a week. He’s only allowed to eat his kibble. That way we can rule out food allergies.”

“Liver treat now,” he told her.

“Sorry, buddy. Not today.”

When Kate and Ken brought him home, I was aghast. “How am I supposed to go a whole week without giving him treats?!”

Because I am the WORST dog mom in the world, and I spoil him completely. He immediately recognizes “cookie”, “treat”, “Krispie”, “special”, “yogurt”, “chewy”, “strip”, “stick”, “delicious” and numerous other words that denote foods that NOW he was unable to have, and which I was unable to give him. At lunch that day, I poured out his kibble, and he came running in the kitchen and stared at the refrigerator.

Me: Eat your lunch, sweetie.
Atlas: Special, please.
Me: No special today. Ooh, look. Yummy kibble.
Atlas: Meh.

So the food stayed in the bowl until dinnertime. Atlas sat where he always does, kitty corner between me and Kate, hoping that someone would give him “summadis”.

Me: Can I give him just a little bit of salmon skin?
Kate: Mom. He can’t have anything but his kibble.
Me: But his kibble is ‘salmon and potato’ flavour. This is just like his kibble.
Kate: Here’s a rule. Every time you want to give him something, ask yourself, “Is it his kibble?” If the answer is No, then you can’t give it to him.
Me: What about a potato?
Kate: IS IT HIS KIBBLE?
Atlas: Kate is mean.
Me: Yes, she is.
Kate: Do you want him to get better or not? Hey! Did you just give him something?!
Me: No! I was wiping his drool off my pants!
Kate: You BETTER have been wiping his drool off your pants, Mother.

And it was the worst week. At first, he went on a hunger strike, leaving his dinner in his bowl overnight and refusing to touch it in the morning. When he realized that wasn’t working, he started to play on my emotions:

Atlas: Ma. Some yogurt for me?
Me: I’m sorry, baby. I can’t give you any.
Atlas: Was I bad? Don’t you love me anymore?
Me: You can lick the cup. Don’t tell Kate.

But then I realized that if I didn’t abide by the vet’s advice, not only would I face the wrath of Katelyn, but his ears wouldn’t get any better. I started hiding in the bathroom to eat breakfast, and at dinner, we were steadfast. After a few days, he was eating his kibble regularly but he was still mopey, so we went out and bought him some stuffies—a hedgehog, a fish, and an alligator that was advertised as a “tough toy”. He doesn’t normally get things like this because he immediately rips them apart and tries to eat the stuffing out of them, but this time, he was so overjoyed at being given SOME kind of treat that he carried the hedgehog around with him for a couple of days like it was his baby before attacking it and shredding it. Same with the fish. But by the time he’d massacred the alligator (tough toy, my *ss), the week was up. Kate and Ken brought him back from the vet appointment with the joyous news that his ears were all cleared up, and that he could have some treats, but nothing processed, no chicken, and no wheat. I don’t know who was happier:

Me: I put the salmon skin in the freezer for you. You want some?
Atlas: Special!!
Me: You certainly are.

Clocked Again

The story this week begins and ends with a clock. Oh no! I hear you say. Did Mydangblog buy ANOTHER CLOCK?! Indeed, I did, and stop judging me. It wasn’t my fault, and the saga is complex and convoluted to say the least…

On Friday, Ken and I went to the antique market to stock my booth. I wanted to look around a bit, and Ken was tired from being awake, so he went to nap in the SUV while I had a browse. I was just about to leave when one of my former co-workers said, “Oh hey—Buddy on third has a clock he wants to show you.” I knew Ken was waiting in a hot car without water or treats, but it was a CLOCK. I booted it up to the third floor, where ‘Buddy’ (not his real name, obvs.), who also works there, was wandering around. When he saw me, his eyes lit up like a drug dealer when his favourite meth head comes around the corner. “Good to see you. I have something I want to show you,” he said, mysteriously, not realizing that I’d been given the “meth heads” up.

Me: Is it a clock?
Buddy: Yeah. It’s really nice. Look.
Me: Ooh, that IS nice. But if I bring another clock home, Ken will kill me.
Buddy: I’m only asking ten bucks.
Me: Sold.

Fortunately, the current clock in my bathroom had just stopped working, so when I crept out to the parking lot, carefully opened the door and slid the clock in the back, I had a ready excuse for Ken once we got home. “It’s nice,” he said. “But couldn’t you use one of your other, several many clocks instead of buying this one?”

“Very few of my 64 clocks work,” I reminded him.

So I put it on the shelf in my bathroom. It had a battery in it already and seemed to be keeping good time. On Saturday morning, I was getting ready for work and I looked up at the clock. “9:05,” I said to myself. “It’s keeping perfect time.” Then I squinted. And tilted my head. Then put on my reading glasses. What had at first seemed to be an abstract floral background turned out to be an English garden with a Romanesque folly…And then I did what any normal person would do—I called Ken (he was out walking the dog). “When you get back, come upstairs—I want to show you something funny. A few minutes later:

Ken: What is it?
Me: You know that clock I bought yesterday?
Ken: Yeah, it looks good up there on the shelf. The time looks right…
Me: Take a closer look. What’s wrong with it?
Ken (also squints): Uh, is it sideways?
Me: Yep.

Instead of it being 9:05, it was twenty after twelve. The clock was a quarter turn sideways. But even at a quarter turn sideways, it LOOKED like the right time. I guess Buddy looked at it, decided not to worry about it being completely sideways, set the time and figured “Meh—for ten bucks, no one’s gonna notice.” And he was almost right.

Ken: Huh. Do you want me to rotate it?
Me: Sure.

So he popped the clock face out of the case and put it to rights. I left for work. I got home a few hours later, and went up to my bathroom to retrieve a part-bottle of wine that I’d hidden there on Friday night (that’s another story), and I looked at the clock. It now said 6:05. Which would have been fine, except it was 4:05. I took it down off the shelf—the hour hand was now loosey-goosey, having fallen off the stem when Ken took the face out. And the whole thing was encased in plastic. There was no conceivable way to fix it, despite my best efforts, which involved looking at it questioningly and shaking it. Then I had a brainstorm—I had recently purchased an antique mantel clock that someone had converted into a battery-operated one, but the battery pack was broken. If I could only get the hands out of THIS clock, I could put the whole contraption in the antique one. But how? I would need a hammer. But if you know anything about me at all, you know that I keep a hammer in almost every room of the house. So I got out my bathroom hammer and broke the plastic casing—carefully of course, because I needed the hands intact.

And after some fiddling, I managed to recreate the entire assemblage in my antique mantel clock, so I am officially a clockematician, or whatever you call someone who cleverly combines two clocks into one, like a ticking Venn diagram, and I can say that with confidence because I am a clockematician. When I fixed my mantel clock on Saturday afternoon, which also involved finding a new second hand, which was red and I had to colour it black with a Sharpie to match, it was 4:30. I’ve been writing this post for a little over 40 minutes, so my mantel clock should say 5:12. Only time will tell…

P.S. It says 5:11. Close enough.